Beginner’s Guide to Bowls

Bowls truly is the ‘Sport for All’ - all ages, all sexes and all abilities. Some bowlers come from other sports, others do not have any sporting background, but excel at the game.

You can learn to play bowls in a day, but you may not master it in a lifetime! However you will definitely have great fun trying. To play well requires concentration, determination and practice and it is proven to be good for your general health.

Bowls is not just a sport, you can also have a varied and active social life at the club. It is the ideal sport for meeting new people. What’s more, bowls is a relatively cheap game compared to other sports so that membership fees are not out of reach for most people.

Interested - What next?  

All you need to try the game are a flat soled pair of shoes. Then with a good eye and arm,
you are off! We have spare bowls to start you off and will give tuition to new players.

Bowls Basics

The game is played on a square of closely cut grass called 'the green', which is divided into playing areas called rinks. The green is surrounded by a small ditch to catch bowls which leave the green, and a bank upon which markers indicate the corners and centrelines of each rink.

Players take turns to deliver their bowls from a mat at one end of the rink towards a small white ball called the jack at the other end. The bowls are shaped so that they take a curved path towards the jack. To be successful the bowl must be delivered with the correct weight, along the correct line.

  

 

 

The object is to get one or more of your bowls closer to the jack than those of your opponents on each end - one point is scored for each counting bowl.

There are many different formats to the game, but the most common in England are singles or in teams of pairs, triples or fours. In singles, the winner is the first to score 21 points. In the other three formats, the winner is the team that scores the most points over a set number of ends.

Still interested?

Then please contact Paul Barrett, Hon. Secretary on 01372 450082 for more information or to get started.